Teddy Steinkellner

Trash Can Days: A Middle School Saga by Teddy Steinkellner is a debut novel told from four points of view: Jake, Danny, Hannah and Dorothy. Through a variety of media including Facebook and email, the children recount their days in middle school.

Yes, middle school can be a hellish set of years. Different groups of children who have grown up together in elementary school are thrown together. Certainly as a child, I faced some of the worst bullying and fights of my entire life so far. And certainly every child brings his or her own challenges to school.

But I'm not convinced that Trash Can Days is focused enough to give a true sense of the challenges middle (or junior high school) students face. Instead, things are diluted by a strange sub plot involving Danny and Jake. Danny is hispanic and lives in an area where there are gangs and he's Jake's best friend because his father works as a gardener for Jake's family. I absolutely cringed at this white privilege, best-friend hero thing.

On the girl side of things, there's Hannah who is inconsistently written. She never seems to make up her mind. She flits around with which boy she's interested in, who she wants to be friends with and never seems to think about anything else. Dorothy, then is set as the oddball — because every coming of age story must have one. And of course, she's a writer. And of course, we have to read samples of her writing (which never seems to work well in fiction).

My final thoughts is that the book needs more polishing. The characters need to be either fleshed out more to make them more realistic — or made more extreme to make the book funnier. Frankly, one voice, rather than multiple, might have worked better.… (mehr)

Trash Can Days reads more like a young adult novel than a middle grade novel so I'd definitely recommend it for the highest end of middle grade readers to ya readers. It chronicles the lives of the narrators through one year at middle school. But there are words like slut written in the bathroom, a lot of bullying, and gang violence and hooking up. It just feels like an older novel even though the characters are in middle school. Maybe I don't know what goes on in middle school? If it's as bad as this, I am so glad I'm not there anymore and maybe I should cut my rising 8th grader a little more slack. What does this say for high school? Or is this just what happens in California? There are a lot more questions this novel raised and it's made me ask a bunch of questions of my kids.

The main characters of the novel, Jake and Hannah Schwartz, Jake's best friend Danny Uribe and Dorothy Wu all come from a school called Arlington, attended by the privileged children of movie stars and directors, music stars and other such people along with a few lucky kids that live near enough to attend. When these students join the rest of the student body at San Paulo middle school, a small microcosm of the world seems to form. All kinds of students from different backgrounds with different troubles, different goals and different cliques (or no cliques) mix together in one soup pot called middle school. Teddy Steinkellner writes separate chapters from each characters point of view, sometimes a random character narrates which can be a little jarring as you try to figure out who this person is, but for the most part, the narration works well. Four characters is not too many to keep up with. Their personalities are so distinct yet overlap and interweave in a way so that at the end, they come together for one pivotal showdown. You'd never believe from the beginning of the novel that this where the end would lead.

I think the synopsis, as is true in so many cases, gives away way too much. I know it's supposed to hook you as a reader and maybe it did when I first grabbed the book off NetGalley. But I didn't reread it before I read the novel so I had no idea what was going to happen as I read. It was so much better that way! I had no preconceived notions, no thoughts, I didn't know anything. I was blind as to who these kids were and where the story was going. Try to read it that way. So much better.

What Trash Can Days reminded me was that no matter what group you are in, popular, eccentric, gang you still have pressures and worries that you have to deal with. And despite your friends changing alliances, your changing body, the changing scenery, there will always be someone, somewhere that you can identify with if you just take a chance. There will always be someone that you don't get along with. And your friends will change as your interests change. ( And, puberty will come, no matter how much you think it won't, it will eventually get there!)

I'd recommend this novel to older MG and all YA lovers who like contemporary reads. I wouldn't call this dark, but it isn't light either. It has it's own hopeful outlook at the end. It's written very well, lean on description, but you still get an idea of what "The Big Top" looks like and the view from on top of it. Despite the length, the novel flows rather quickly with a satisfying conclusion.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley. I was not compensated for my review. All opinions expressed are my own.… (mehr)